The Process of Healing is Better than Closure

A couple of weekends ago, James, Lizzy, and I picked up my kid brother to take him on a college visit to our Alma Mater, Benedictine College. Ten hours of driving with a one year old prone to carsickness was an adventure in it’s own right, but visiting Benedictine has been at the top of our lists since the beginning of the pandemic when James and I both missed normal, peace, and refuge.

Atchison, Kansas may not be the promised land, but it has held a very special place in our hearts since our college years. That little city on the windy Kansas hill always comes to mind as an oasis to get back to the simple peace of life. This opportunity to go back was too tempting to pass up, but as the days grew nearer I felt in my heart this tug that it was time to say hello to an old part of me, and goodbye to the brokenness of a wounded young college girl.

2020-21 has been (I think for many of us) a time of loss, awakening, and self assessment. Not only was it a time period in which James and I discerned graduate school, but, for myself, a couple years of struggling with a lot of old wounds from college and before, as well as post partum depression/anxiety. Left alone with the isolation of quarantine, I had plenty of time to pray and confront the lack of trust in Christ that has plagued my adolescence and adult life.

Coming back to Benedictine was going to be my time to return as a bolder and better woman – a woman who has her life together and her faith restored. It was my chance to prove to myself that I was prepped and ready for this next great adventure for our lives. It was an opportunity to get closure on this formative and trying time of my life, and move on to the next.

I walked into the abbey crypt ready to go back to the confessional, something I had often feared doing while a student. I confessed a few week’s worth of sins, did the penance, sat down for mass, and instantly noticed I wasn’t feeling on top of the world. In fact, the same throws of anxiety lurking from college Kate were there and pushing me into doubt and scrupulosity once again.

In a moment I laughed to myself. Thanks, Jesus, for humbling me again. Thank you for reminding me that this is not my victory moment. I won’t pretend to be wholly responsible for my own healing...I owe that to You.

In many ways, I had wanted this visit to Benedictine to heal me of all my old anxieties and be a glimpse at our old life before we begin this new one in a new town, a new college, and with new friends. I wanted to say goodbye to the old life I sometimes missed, both the good and bad: the peppy and cheerful Kate, who waltzed through residence halls, talking to every passer-by. The Kate with ions of time to sit on the lawn and read. The Kate who never felt smart enough, but hid in massive literary texts. The Kate who over-functioned as a way to feel more worthy. I needed to take leave of that part of my life, bolder, brighter, and more victorious. I needed to see my old friends and my old favorite places and prove that I am more mature now, more confident, an adult, a mother, a daughter of Christ. What have you. I am fine now. I am better now. I am able to take whatever is thrown at me during these next 2-6 years.

In truth, I am better now. I am a stronger woman, a better Catholic, but I’m still a work in progress. I’m a wounded person, an exhausted mother, an over-functioner, a scrupulous Catholic. I still find myself crying out to Christ to make me better and more patient, to heal me, to strengthen my faith.

Now, however, I’m starting to see what He’s doing on this journey. He’s using every day and every experience to teach me to have faith – to trust. He’s using every weakness to remind me of His power and help. This discernment, this pandemic, and this journey of my motherhood has been an endless and ongoing invitation to take Christ’s hand and believe He will not let me fall. He invites me, as He did as a college girl, to drop my baggage and hold out my arms, so He can embrace me. I am often slow to do this, I tend to take years of overthinking, complaining, and stewing before trusting – and for some strange reason, He still sticks around, because the process of His healing is better, more powerful, than closure.

During our visit, I walked through sleepy Atchison to catch a March sunrise over the Missouri River. I had done this often as a student, and I wanted one last time to revel in the memories. I thanked God for this.

I thanked God for the journey; I thanked Him for His kindness, in bringing me to where I am. I thanked Him for keeping me on this path and vocation to greater holiness. I thanked Him for the strength to go on this journey with James and Lizzy.

I’ve often been scared in this process; and to be quite frank, I’m still a little bit terrified. As I write, I am trying to take every reminder of this fear as an opportunity to meet it with better confidence that God has our future in His hands. He will give us the graces we need.